If you've applied for a job in the past several years you might have encountered SHL and their oh so wonderful online job assessment.
The company, owned by a U.K. private equity firm, provides job assessment tests that will give you a headache, and make you feel like an utter idiot.
SHL seems to be the main job assessment employers, big and small, private and corporate, rely on for their hiring needs. In other words, it's H.R. being lazy and relying on a computer program to do their job.
Most upsetting is many government jobs are now using SHL to screen prospective employees.
I don't think most people here have a problem taking a job assessment for positions that require certain skills, especially highly specialized skills, or employers simply needing to make sure you know that “2 plus 2 equals 4.”
The problem is the SHL assessment test asks unnecessary complicated SAT/LSAT/MCAT type questions that don't seem germaine or pertinent to the job position.
Furthermore, these are timed tests and with complicated reading and math problems that are set against a minute or two to answer the question, which a lot of people cannot solve in just a minute or two.
My assessment is SHL is a cancer on society that is making the job seeking process much more difficult and frustrating than it needs to be.
Finally, my question ultimately is this: Aside from H.R. being lazy relying solely on test scores what exactly is the purpose of employers using SHL when their assessment is specifically designed to be difficult (resulting in a prospective employee that might be a perfect fit for the employer being “removed from consideration”)?